It concludes:” Institutional investors have a far greater opportunity—and in some cases legal obligation—to incorporate environmental, social and governance issues in their investment decision-making than is traditionally believed”.

In other words, social and environmental issues, have something to do with the bottom line.

Something to do with performance and thus share price.

Energy and Water

I said it has been good to be in Dubai.

The economic miracle here could not have occurred without water.

And water here means desalination.

We need new technologies for energy generation.

We also need them to produce water in a less energy intensive way.

Improved desalination technologies could therefore play their part.

Their part in halving the number of people without access to clean and sufficient drinking water.

So can better recycling and water saving technologies from the home to the field.

In helping to meet part of the Millennium Development Goals.

Water technologies should be taken forward at the next World Water Forum in Mexico in March.

Ecosystems, Energy and Tourism

Another reasons for the renaissance in global environment policy is science.

I mentioned earlier the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

More than 1,300 experts have concluded that 60 per cent of our life support services are in trouble.

Many of these ecosystems are the basis for tourism.

Tourism is the world’s biggest industry.

Tourism has been high on our agenda here.

In the past the economic value of ecosystem services has been all but ignored.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment has changed this.

More research is also coming through.

Let me cite one figure from a new report by UNEP’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre.

It notes that a coral reef may be worth up to a million US dollars a square kilometer.

The value comes from the maintenance of sandy beaches up to their value for divers and other tourists.

We must continue to strengthen our Global Programme of Action to reduce sources of pollution to the coastal environment.

We must build on the Millenniun Ecosystem Assessment and sharpen the economics.

We must go further.

We must prove that investments in rehabilitating damaged and degraded ecosystems give you a ‘Big Bang for Your Buck’.

Some countries already know this.

India announced at the recent Delhi Sustainable Development Forum that it will restore and repair up to 500,000 degraded water bodies.

The announcement was made not by the environment minister but the finance minister.

Spread the word around.

More sustainable use of energy will help here too.

All roads lead to energy in the end.

Acidification of forests is becoming a growing problem in parts of Asia.

Last year we released findings from our Global Environment Outlook Year Book.

‘Dead zones’, oxygen deprived areas of ocean, are becoming more common and more persistent.

Sewage and fertilizers have a part to play.

But so too do nitrogen compounds from burning fossil fuels.

Nitrogen is also harming other ecosystem services such as heaths and grasslands.

So we must take forward the International Nitrogen Initiative.

Climate change, a result of our wasteful use of energy, is partly to blame for land degradation and the loss of soils.

Desertification is a major challenge and too often forgotten.

You may be able to rehabilitate a wetland or a polluted river.

But it can take millennia to recreate soils lost to the wind, droughts or erosion.

I hope we can turn the corner on this in this International Year of Deserts and Desertification.

The United Arab Emirates is a major tourist destination. It knows that value of its ecosystems.

Being here also reminds us of the importance of ecosystem services beyond their dollars and cents.

The late Sheik Zayed, whose name graces the Zayed Prize, is rightly praised for ‘greening the deserts’—for directly fighting land degradation.

He is rightly praised for his captive breeding programmes for animals like the Arabian Oryx.

Sheik Zayed drew inspiration from his faith and from his cultural identity.

I share the vision of His Excellency Sheik Mohamed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum when, on the evening on the ceremony, he called for a dialogue amongst civilizations.

The Future

I too have pause for thought over the future.

I have a five month old granddaughter.

I also wonder about the kind of world she will see when she is my age—when she is close to 70 years old.

There is every chance that, with political will and the unleashing of human ingenuity, she should be optimistic.